General Guidance on Facilitating Civil Discourse

This is a general guide for how to lead a small group discussion with key tips of facilitators and participants, and an example script with questions.

Questions can effectively elicit people’s thoughts, beliefs, values, and feelings and encourage more productive civil discourse. This resource gives instructors a greater understanding of the necessity of good questions and can be given to students to

As a facilitator, there are many ways to decide what format will work best for a particular discussion. These are some possible formats to use depending on your class and the topic. 

Participatory facilitation is an approach that fosters shared power, collective decision making, and active engagement. This resource is a guide to consider how participatory facilitation (instead of conventional) could enhance class discussions and

This resource provides a list of behaviors that individual students or groups may exhibit that could hinder their learning or the productivity of a conversation, and gives examples of what may underlie the behavior and possible instructor responses.

This resource is a great place to start! It describes best practices and general advice for what to avoid as a facilitator.